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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25002514">Rhymes and Reasons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NAOA/pseuds/NAOA'>NAOA</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hellblazer, Hellblazer &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alone with Thoughts, Angst, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, Gen, Guilt, Insomnia, Regret</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:34:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,227</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25002514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NAOA/pseuds/NAOA</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John tries to make it through the days between his stays at Ravenscar but sometimes bad nights creep up on him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Rhymes and Reasons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Found this in a flash drive and thought I'd post it. Thanks for reading.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's a hot night for sleeping. Too bloody hot and John Constantine turns over in the damp sheets of his bed, the air around him putrid and suffocating with the promise of more rain.</p><p>It's the hottest part of June and he can't sleep a wink.</p><p>He's three months out of Ravenscar which is a pretty good shore leave for him, three months without getting carted back or in any kind of trouble.</p><p>He can feel it's coming to an end though, the edges of his mind starting to fray from all the wear again and he tosses and turns, trying to sleep, knowing he's going to fuck it all up, just like all the other times.</p><p>He's coming apart again, just like he does every few months, every time after they patch him up and send him on his way. It just keeps happening and as the night bares down on him, alone in a filthy little bedsit in Manchester he gives up.</p><p>He pulls himself into a sitting position and draws his knees up to his chest, reaching for a cigarette, not caring that the smoke only makes the room hotter and the air is already bad, not caring that he's dropping ash on the bed sheets or that his throat is already raw from too many cigarettes the day before.</p><p>He's got visions in his head, little blond girls that slip through the cracks. 1234567 all good children go to heaven, except when they don't. Except when you send them to hell and he pulls hard on his cigarette, remembering her blue eyes and how he sent her to hell. Little Astra all that was left of her was a hand.</p><p>His own hands shake and he tries to drill holes in his head with his knees, tries to drive out the shakes and the memories and the lies he's told.</p><p>He's good at lying. He thinks that may be all he's good at. Lying and killing kids.</p><p>He's only twenty-three, it's been a year since Newcastle and everything going wrong. A year since he's had friends and a band and a fucking brain that worked.</p><p>A year since he realized how fucking pathetic he was.</p><p>He shakes in the dark, not knowing the hour and unable to calm his thudding mind. His useless skull that screams guilt at him and wants to see him bloody and dead.</p><p>The little room is too hot and John feels as if his head is going to explode. There's sweat running down his skin and his shirt is soaked and the cig is out.</p><p>He lights another one and coughs, needing water, not having any and not getting up to get some.</p><p>He'll be back in Ravenscar with the doctors and nurses and orderlies and all of the screaming and screams that come from him.</p><p>He can feel the walls chasing him, hear the taunts and mocks and beatings, echoing off of them. He can hear Astra calling for help. He can hear his own heart thudding painfully in his black chest.</p><p>His heart must be black too. Rotten and still pumping for some reason. It forgot to stop in Newcastle.</p><p>He nearly calms the shaking and reaches for the clock radio on the bedside table. The time is wrong but the radio works and he fiddles with it, trying desperately to break the silence and it's screaming.</p><p>The rain hasn't started again yet but there's leaves and branches scraping at his window, clawing like an animal trying to get in. Like someone trying to send a message.</p><p>He get's the radio working and hears Chuck Berry singing Johnny B. Goode through the static.</p><p>Johnny B. Goode.</p><p>John be good or John Law will come and lock you away. Gotta protect John Q. Public.</p><p>Good old Johnny on the spot, always there to help a friend, always there to make things worse.</p><p>King John was not a good man.</p><p>Johnny Rotten.</p><p>Johnny come lately. . . always too late. Too late to save Astra. Too late to sleep. Too late to try. Fucked if he can do anything about it.</p><p>Pretending to know things he didn't. Pretending he knew what he was doing. Pretending, pretending, pretending and lying. Lying some more.</p><p>Sally went round the moon but Johnny had gone round the bend and Jack had a new master and Mary still couldn't find all her fucking sheep.</p><p>He gives up sleeping and goes for the drink instead. The drink always helps and who cares if its bad for him? Johnny already went round the moon, all in a loopty loop.</p><p>It's all in a loopty loop.</p><p>The bloody dish ran away with the bloody saucer and no one knew where Alice lived anymore.</p><p>Did anyone remember Alice? It was a song about Alice.</p><p>No, it was a song about Astra.</p><p>He chokes on the end of his second cigarette and wishes they didn't end. Wishes they just burned forever.</p><p>The muggy little room is hazy and he feels light headed. He can't remember if he ate that day, doesn't care. The rent is payed up on the crappy little bedsit and that's all that matters.</p><p>He's got a dark little hole he can hide in.</p><p>The drink is hitting him and it helps a little. Never enough because all good children didn't go to heaven and he wasn't going either, not that he wanted it or that he even had any idea what he wanted.</p><p>Sleep?</p><p>Not likely.</p><p>He stays up the whole night, unable to rest, mind turning in useless, dead thoughts, skull caving in on it's self as the rain starts again outside, hot and hitting like bombs against the roof and window, big dollops of water, pummeling the earth and her darkness, keeping him inside, keeping him from sleep, keeping him with his dead thoughts and self.</p><p>He can barely see in the dark room, the wrong time is glowing on the clock, the static is nearly obliterating the music.</p><p>He's almost out of booze.</p><p>It's a bad night and as the sun starts to crack across the heavens he turns from it, tired, drunk, throat raw and head aching. A ,million cigarettes stubbed out in the ash tray.</p><p>Are you sleeping brother John?</p><p>One more John for his collection. One more bastard who couldn't sleep. One more John to fuck things up.</p><p>He'll go back to Ravenscar soon. He always does.</p><p>He finishes the booze and knows that in a few hours he'll have to venture out for more cigarettes.</p><p>John thinks of Matthews, Marks, Johns and Lukes, of Peters and Pauls and Marys quite contrary, Georgie porgie pudding and pie. . . all of them blowing in the wind.</p><p>Not sleeping was the right choice because even with his eyes open he still sees nightmares. No need to make it worse. No need to sleep. No need to leave the bedsit more than he has to. No need to put himself on another person. No need to see another soul. No need to see his own in the mirror. No need. No need. God, no need.</p><p>King John was not a good man- he had his little ways- and sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days.</p><p>King John was not a good man but he had his hopes and fears.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Honestly, I don't think I was sober when I wrote this and that's why there's all the weird references to nursery rhymes and stuff. I also think it kind of falls apart at the end a bit but it's not the worst thing I've ever written and thanks to all for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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